The steamy “Riverdale,” which begins Thursday, owes more to those newer iterations. (The showrunner, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, is the chief creative officer of Archie Comics.) It chucks the comics’ old clichés for a new pastiche, drawn from decades of moody teen dramas, that occasionally adds up to something new.

The familiar characters are back, as are landmarks like Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe. But it’s a dark, bitter milkshake that “Riverdale” concocts, built on the suspicion that any town this squeaky clean must be hiding decay, corruption and secrets.

And jeepers, are there secrets. The big one surrounds the murder of Jason Blossom (Trevor Stines), who disappeared while on an outing in the woods with his mean-girl twin sister Cheryl (Madelaine Petsch). Archie (K. J. Apa) — an aspiring musician with six-pack abs — witnessed a key bit of evidence but can’t talk because of the circumstances: He was hooking up with his music teacher, Ms. Grundy (Sarah Habel), now a sultry knockout.

The whole Archieverse is hotter and more haunted. Veronica Lodge (Camila Mendes), the spellbinding rich girl, is now a transplant from Manhattan whose father is in jail for fraud. Betty Cooper (Lili Reinhart), still pining away in Archie’s friend-zone, has an older sister who had a breakdown after an entanglement with Jason.

It’s a more diverse Riverdale, too, if mainly among the supporting characters. Kevin Keller (Casey Cott), a gay student, was introduced in the recent comics. The mayor, the principal and the girl group Josie and the Pussycats are all African-American. When Archie asks Josie (Ashleigh Murray) if he might write songs for her group, she scolds him for his white privilege, and he soberly concedes her point. Meet our new Archiekins: not just ripped, but woke.

The malt shop is still in business, but the drive-in is closing down. The town is beset with bullying, sexual harassment and abuse. Jughead (Cole Sprouse), the wry, burger-munching sidekick of the comics, is now a dour, emo narrator. “Get closer,” he says, “and you start seeing the shadows underneath.”

Finding the corrosion under the waxed-and-polished chassis of small-town America is itself an old trope. “Riverdale” flirts with the kinky darkness of David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet,” as well as “Twin Peaks,” whose Mädchen Amick plays Betty’s hard-charging, Adderall-pushing mother. But the series is closer to teen intrigues like “Pretty Little Liars” and “Gossip Girl.”

“Riverdale” is very conscious of its influences — too much so at times. It’s a blizzard of knowing references and characters talking about one another as characters. “You may be a stock character from a ’90s teen movie,” Cheryl snipes at Veronica, “but I’m not.”

She’s right — Cheryl is more like a stock character from “Glee.” Her line is typical of much of the dialogue in “Riverdale”: It’s clever, but it sounds written. Still, the show has a welcome sense of humor about itself.

“Riverdale” is more an ensemble show than the story of Archie, which is fortunate, because here he’s written and played as a flat, brooding bore. In another touch of meta-casting, he spars with his father, played by Luke Perry, who practically invented soulful teen brooding on “Beverly Hills 90210.”

Archie’s gal pals are far more interesting, especially the new, more complex Betty. In the excellent third episode, she and Veronica join forces for a revenge plot against some sex-predator jocks — a theme, lately, in series like MTV’s “Sweet/Vicious.”

Ms. Reinhart plays her vigilante turn with a gusto that conveys years of Betty’s repressing her feelings, and the two girls’ bonding complicates their inevitable love triangle with Archie. (That dynamic is very “Dawson’s Creek,” whose Greg Berlanti is an executive producer here.)

The early episodes get better the deeper they delve into the murder mystery, despite false notes like members of a biker gang who look like extras from “Grease.”

If the tone is not yet consistent, the aesthetic is, a strong sign that “Riverdale” knows what it wants to be. The terrific art direction warps the bubble-gum iconography into something haunting and lurid. Take Archie and the Blossom twins’ hair — so red that it’s clownish, like dyed cotton candy. What the original comics drew as milky and wholesome, “Riverdale” dials up to ghostly and unnatural.

The old world of Archie was saccharine, down to the 1969 single by spinoff pop group the Archies, “Sugar, Sugar” (which gets an update in the series from the Pussycats). This “Riverdale” suggests that so much sugar, over time, can’t help but make a town a little sick.